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Queensland researchers may have played a part in one of the most important scientific discoveries in human history – evidence of life on another planet.
Studying samples collected in the Jezero Crater by NASA’s Mars rover Perserverance, a team of scientists found minuscule “leopard spots” on a rock, containing signatures of two iron-rich minerals: vivianite (hydrated iron phosphate) and greigite (iron sulfide).
On Earth, both minerals are known byproducts of microbial life.
QUT astrobiologist David Flannery was part of the team that discovered possible signs of life on Mars.Credit: QUT
“This very well could be the clearest sign of life that we’ve ever found on Mars, which is incredibly exciting,” Acting NASA administrator Sean Duffy said as he announced the discovery early Thursday morning (AEST).
An ocean away, Professor David Flannery from Queensland University of Technology’s said the rock sample was exactly the kind of rock they were hoping to find.
“We have studied these features in the past, hoping to find them [on Mars],” he said.
“Apart from like a stromatolite, which is evidence for life at the surface in a lake, we found everything that we wanted to find – including igneous rocks that we can date that helps us put this sample into context.
“This sort of feature for life in the subsurface is exactly what we were hoping to find, so you’ve got to do a double-take and pour over the data, really study the data, for a long time to convince yourself that this could actually be something super exciting.”
The Brisbane astrobiologist was one of three QUT researchers, along with Dr Michael Jones and graduate student Brendan Orenstein, among 89 co-authors of the peer-reviewed paper of the findings, which was published in the journal Nature.
Flannery said as a result of the research, the scientific community could say, for the first time, a potential extraterrestrial bio-signature had been identified.
The ‘leopard spots’ found in the Jezero Crater are a potential sign of life on Mars.Credit: NASA
“It’s a big deal, but we can’t say we’ve definitely found life until we bring it back,” he said.
If confirmed, the question would turn to whether the life was independent to life on Earth.
“This discovery gets us closer to answering the question of whether life exists beyond Earth and the next steps would be to bring the samples back and study them more closely on Earth to try and answer some of those other really exciting questions,” Flannery said.
“For example, did life evolve twice in our own solar system from scratch? Or was life perhaps transported from Earth to Mars – or vice versa – in the past?
“Or is Mars a sort of unique planet that has its own carbon cycle that doesn’t involve life?
“These are all possibilities in their questions that we can answer with the return samples.”
That could take a while. President Donald Trump has slashed the NASA budget since his return to the Oval Office, putting the planned Mars Sample Return program at risk.
“We’re looking at how we get this sample back, or other samples back,” Duffy said.
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“We’re going to look at our timing. And, you know, how do we spend money better, and what technology do we have to get samples back more quickly?”
While the discovery dealt with the question of ancient life on Mars, Flannery said the possibility of life persevering on the red planet could not be discounted.
“The surface of Mars today is really cold and dry – it’s too cold and dry for life as we know it to survive, and the ice caps are also too cold and dry,” he said.
“But, below the surface, there could be aquifers on Mars, like the water tables in the subsurface.
“On Earth, microbes are living in the subsurface, even five or more kilometres down below the surface, so it’s totally possible that if life evolved in the past on Mars, it may still survive in the subsurface.”
QUT was a key player in building the Planetary Instrument for X-ray Lithochemistry – one of seven instruments chosen to be packed on the Mars rover.
Along with PIXL, QUT researchers built the PIXLISE software NASA scientists used to analysed the data from Perserverance.
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